The Chansonnier de Bayeux: An Early Sixteenth-Century Polyphonic Source and Its Polyphonic Relatives

The research focussed on a monophonic chansonnier compiled after 1500 in the context of earlier, contemporary and later musical sources transmitting polyphonic and monophonic concordances and variants of its repertoire, without forgetting the repertoire uniquely transmitted by it. The resulting monograph on the manuscript will include a historical introduction and an online transcription of the melodies with their texts. It will moreover examine a group of songs shared with another monophonic chansonnier, exploring their polyphonic arrangements in related sources and the transformations of music-poetic forms, like the virelai. In examining the spread of various songs from the late fifteenth to the early sixteenth century, this study explores the significance of monophonic songs within the musical landscape of late medieval and early Renaissance France and Europe. Moreover, it reconsiders the concept of ‘variant’, proposing a more nuanced and open conception of ‘musical work’, existing well beyond the traces left in the sources.